THE PUBLIC EDITOR; Questions and Answers, in No Particular Order

By CLARK HOYT

Published: October 14, 2007

WHEN you read Deborah Solomon's ''Questions For'' in The New York Times Magazine, it's like crashing an exclusive book party at Tina Brown's East Side garden apartment.

There you stand, sipping white wine, as Solomon and a famous author or politician or media personality trade zippy repartee. Her sharp, challenging questions elicit pithy, surprising answers -- a disloyal comment about an employer, a confession to a Diet Coke habit, what's in Jack Black's iPod.

That is the illusion of Solomon's column. The reality is something else: the 700 or so words each week are boiled down from interviews that sometimes last more than an hour and run 10,000 words. Though presented in a way that suggests a verbatim transcript, the order of the interview is sometimes altered, and the wording of questions is changed -- for clarity or context, editors say. At least three interviews have been conducted by e-mail because the subjects couldn't speak English or had other speech difficulties. And, Solomon told me, ''Very early on, I might have inserted a question retroactively, so the interview would flow better,'' a practice she said she no longer uses.

''Questions For'' came under fire recently when a reporter for New York Press, a free alternative weekly, interviewed two high-profile journalists -- Amy Dickinson, the advice columnist who followed Ann Landers at The Chicago Tribune, and Ira Glass, creator of the public radio program ''This American Life'' -- who said their published interviews with Solomon contained questions she never asked.

While the vast majority of Solomon's interview subjects have never complained, these are not the first who have. Last year, The Times Magazine published an angry letter from NBC's Tim Russert, who said that the portrayal of his interview with her was ''misleading, callous and hurtful.''

Russert, the author of two books about his father, told me that the interview had been presented as an opportunity to talk about his mom on Mother's Day. Instead, the interview, headlined, ''All About My Father,'' featured a seemingly insensitive Russert dodging Solomon's questions about his mother. ''I talked at great length about my mother,'' he said, but none of it appeared in the published interview. Russert said that Solomon combined questions and took ''an answer and transposed it to another question.''

Gerald Marzorati, the editor of the magazine, said, ''We examined his complaint and found it more or less justified.'' Russert had talked about his mother, Marzorati said, and Solomon made it appear that he had not. Solomon said, ''I made a mistake not putting in what he said about his mother.''

Afterward, Marzorati said, a new policy was put in place, requiring that Solomon give the tapes of her interviews to her editor or a magazine researcher, in case a subject raised an objection. It was then, Solomon said, that she also stopped inserting retroactive questions.

Dickinson's interview came in July 2003, before the new policy, and was not recorded. It starts with Dickinson saying that her column would be ''funnier and snappier and might be more fun to read'' than Ann Landers. Solomon then says, ''How immodest of you! Isn't it bad manners to brag? Some of us found Ann Landers hilarious.''

Dickinson said Solomon never said those words to her. If she had, Dickinson said, she would have bristled, instead of replying, as the interview had it, ''I always found the entertainment value came more from the questions than the answers.''

''I was correctly quoted,'' Dickinson said, ''but what totally jumped out, the questions were not the same.''

Solomon said she felt that Dickinson was being ''boastful,'' and, ''I'm sure I said as much.''

The Glass interview was published last March, after the new safeguards were in place. Glass, who was just starting a television version of ''This American Life'' on Showtime, was stung by this printed exchange with Solomon: Q: ''What do you think of the network?'' A: ''I don't meet many people who are talking about shows on Showtime.''

He did not deny saying it, but he said he was sure it came during a long conversation about how the network marketed itself. ''I don't believe she asked me that question,'' he said. ''If she did, it certainly didn't precede that answer.''

Glass said, ''If I'm remembering this wrong,'' the tape would establish what was said. But Solomon and the magazine editors can't find it.

Aaron Retica, the magazine's research chief, said he listened to parts of the tape at the time and is sure that Solomon asked Glass what he thought of Showtime. Solomon said, ''Of course I asked him about Showtime,'' and she was adamant that they had not gotten into a marketing discussion.

Retica said he read the interview back to Glass before it was published, and that Glass reacted strongly to his Showtime comment, saying ''there was a different context.'' In an earlier exchange of e-mail, Solomon had already posed a new question to Glass to allow him to get off the hook a bit. ''Isn't that a cocky thing to say?'' she wrote. ''Why don't you feel more appreciative of people who appreciate you?''

Glass wrote a 60-word reply, calling the Showtime people ''total sweethearts'' and saying how ''insanely lucky'' he was to work with them. It was boiled to his opening words: ''But I do feel appreciative! I'm not communicating my feelings very well if you're not getting that.''

Retica said he regarded it as ''a classic sort of row-back situation. He wasn't thrilled with what he'd said,'' and the magazine had given Glass a chance to amplify without removing a provocative quote. ''I felt we'd solved this.''

In an interview with Columbia Journalism Review in 2005, Solomon said: ''Feel free to mix the pieces of this interview around, which is what I do.''

''Is there a general protocol on that?'' her questioner asked.

''There's no Q. and A. protocol,'' Solomon replied. ''You can write the manual.'' Solomon told me she was joking.

In fact, there is a protocol, and ''Questions For'' isn't living up to it. The Times's Manual of Style and Usage says that readers have a right to assume that every word in quotation marks is what was actually said. ''Questions For'' does not use quotations marks but is presented as a transcript. The manual also says ellipses should be used to signal omissions in transcripts, and that ''The Times does not 'clean up' quotations.''

Marzorati told me, ''this is an entertainment, not a newsmaker interview on 'Meet the Press.''' But that does not relieve it of the obligation to live up to The Times's standards or offer an explanation when it deviates from them.

I think editors made a mistake by not publishing an editor's note with Russert's letter, acknowledging error and explaining the reforms. Now, I believe, if they want to preserve the illusion of a conversation, they should publish with each column a brief description of the editing standards: the order of questions may be changed, information may be added for clarity, and the transcript has been boiled down without indicating where material has been removed.

If such a disclaimer destroys the illusion, maybe ''Questions For'' needs to be rethought.